Hand-held power tools, such as circular saws, have been popular wood-working tools for many years. In a typical sawing operation, the user begins by marking or otherwise identifying a desired line along which to saw the material to be cut. The user then guides the saw during cutting, manually aligning the blade with the desired line of cut. Maintaining this alignment manually can be difficult because the typical circular saw has a blade guard that obscures the user's view of the blade at the point of cutting and thus impedes the user's ability to accurately align the blade with the desired cutting line. This same difficulty arises with other hand-held power tools, such as routers, coping saws, etc.
To assist in the alignment, circular saws are typically provided with a guide slot that is usually located on the planar cutting base of the saw, and is positioned in front of, and in line with, the circular saw blade. The user then positions the saw so that the line on the material appears in the guide slot. While the provision of such a guide slot does aid the user in proper saw alignment, problems still exist. For example, because the guide slot is located in front of the blade, if the saw blade is not perpendicular relative to the workpiece, the guide slot might be positioned on the cut line while the blade is not. If the user begins to cut the material with the saw in this orientation, it is often difficult to correct the alignment problem. Additionally, because the blade is covered by a blade guard, the user cannot see the blade as it exits the material, and therefore cannot directly monitor the travel of the blade.
Circular saws generally include any number of features meant to address the issues with visibility and alignment to improve the user's efficiency, accuracy, and safety while performing a cutting operation. For example, some circular saws include a lighting device to illuminate the portion of the workpiece being cut curing the cutting operation. Such lighting devices assist the user in manually aligning the circular saw blade with the cutting line drawn on the workpiece by enhancing visibility of the portion of the workpiece being cut. However, current circular saws including lighting devices employ complicated and costly mechanisms to actuate the lighting trigger button. Accordingly, there remains a need for lighting devices in circular saws that are simple and less complicated to implement.